RUSSIA CLAIMS BUMPER GRAIN HARVEST.

With almost all the harvest now in, preliminary results put Russia’s 1997 grain harvest at 84.3 million tons. Estimates of the final total vary but, thanks to favorable weather, this is sure to be a better result than was the case in 1995 (63.5 million tons) or 1996 (69.3 million tons). This year’s maize crop is also up over last year’s, but the sunflower crop is somewhat down. (Finansovye izvestia, November 11; Itar-Tass, November 12)

Russian Duma Sounds Alarm Over Spread of AIDS.